A fairy-tale about design – Once upon a time there was a group of young people. They enjoyed working with their hands, they drew, sketched, collaged, hammered and glued. Sometimes they worked jointly, while other times they would each work for themselves, subsequently meeting and telling each other what they had just done without the others. They discovered such a pleasure in their activity that they decided to stay forever creative. Therefore, they had themselves separated in groups of graphics, art, design , fashion, illustration and architecture. Today they are professionally creative. At least for 1 hour and 28 minutes per day. Hence the world needs to know what creatives do, they spend 1 hour and 42 minutes to communicate their practice: via email or phone. They also spend 2 hours and 6 minutes writing about their work. And since they are diligent creatives, expecting everything to be bulletproof, they research. In fact 2 hours and 15 minutes per day. Not to forget the 1 hour and 27 minutes, which they need to invest in managing appointments and personal things. This was not at all what the group of young people had expected. “Where is the pleasure?”, they wondered. “Why don’t we have any time to exchange and to work together anymore?”

Depot Basel believes that “we need to create such occasions” and thus invites to It’s boring alone – an event of collective drawing. For the first edition Philippe Karrer, Maria Jeglinska, Cora Meyer, Kevin Casado, Etnik Ferataj, Tobias Gutmann a.o. will come to Depot Basel and would be happy if more people – both designers and non-designers – would join them and bring their own pencil case in order to use the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of April, from 12 to 19h to test various techniques, such as frottage, still life and collage.

Participants do not need to sign up in advance!

Finished works by participants will be on display in the shop window of Depot Basel from the 26th of April to the 1st of June 2016. In collaboration with Erwin Block and his mimeograph*, with whom we print limited editions of the participating designers, we invite you to the inauguration of our new format It’s boring alone on the 25th of April up from 18.00 – 20.00 at Depot Basel.

If you should be interested in observing the designers’ work or in learning more about the mimeograph process, you are welcome to visit Depot Basel on the 25th and 26th of April between 10.00 – 19.00.

The mimeograph process is a screen-printing stencil duplicator for smaller editions Mimeographs used to be employed in offices, for teaching material and church bulletins. Moreover, early fanzines were produced with this popular and low-cost technique. It was only in the late 1960s that mimeographs were replaced by photocopying machines.

Now leading him to Depot Basel, Erwin Blok began his tour with the mimeograph at the Charles Nyples Lab at Jan van Eyck Academy, Multiform Institute for Fine Art, Design and Reflection.